Afternoon round-up: Videos and articles from the second day of training camp, Zetterberg stuff and chatter about Jussi Jokinen

Of Red Wings-related note on a Saturday afternoon:

1. Fox Sports Detroit’s John Keating conducted an interview with Jeff Blashill from Centre ICE Arena this morning…

2. And the Red Wings posted clips of David Pope, Andreas Athanasiou and Evgeny Svechnikov speaking with the media:

 

3. MLive’s Ansar Khan happened to write a morning article regarding Svechnikov’s summer training…

“I had a strong finish at the end of the year, better second half,” Svechnikov said. “I’m going to bring that with me to camp and be more consistent during the season and just be stronger.”

Svechnikov, 21, had seven goals and 23 points in 57 games for the Grand Rapids Griffins. That’s not what he or the Red Wings expected after he collected 20 goals and 51 points in 74 games the year before as an AHL rookie.

Skating is one of the keys to his improvement. Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill hopes Svechnikov got quicker over the summer training with brother Andrei, the second overall selection this year by the Carolina Hurricanes.

“They spent a lot of time on the track, trying to get those fast-twitch muscles going,” Blashill said. “I think that’s a positive, just help his skating.”

Svechnikov described it as a long but successful summer in which he accomplished what he set out to do.

“Skating and just tracking off the ice,” he said. “A lot of sprints and long runs. It was hard, really hard, for two months. It was like three days a week with tracking. Every practice was different — 400 meters, 300 meters, 200, 100. Then another sprint and a little bit break and then another sprint. It’s just crazy. It was hard.”

4. The Free Press’s Helene St. James wrote an article regarding Henrik Zetterberg’s leadership…

“In a perfect world, you have four Henrik Zetterbergs on the team and everyone gets a chance to play with him,” Niklas Kronwall said. “Guys like that don’t come around too often. I’m happy I got a chance to watch him up close all these years.”

Kronwall may feel Zetterberg’s absence the hardest: The two have grown close over the years.

“Without him in the locker room, it is going to be weird,” Kronwall said. “He has been there ever since I got here, and he’s always been the backbone of the team.

“I can’t say enough good things about him, all the stuff he has battled through. I don’t think people realize what he’s gone through to still be able to play three full seasons in a row, it really is incredible.”

The Wings are likely to go with three alternate captains for a stretch, with Frans Nielsen a leading candidate to join Kronwall and Abdelkader in wearing an ‘A.’ Larkin is likely to wear one in 2019-20, after Kronwall has retired.

As Larkin is poised to take on a bigger role, his readiness comes from having observed Zetterberg.

“He had a very quiet demeanor around the locker room,” Larkin said. “As young guys, you can kind of just roll out of bed and go show up to practice and feel OK, but these guys, they work out every day, they’re playing every day and they’re performing and getting their bodies ready. He wasn’t in the gym talking about how he was in the gym every day, he was there, he was getting ready, he was very quiet about it and did what needed to be done.Is wearing a letter everything? No, it’s doing the right things, it’s contributing to the team, it’s winning games.”

5. The Free Press’s Ryan Ford wrote an article about Henrik Zetterberg’s “career-defining numbers“…

The big games

7: Zetterberg has seven career hat tricks; six of those came in the regular season. The seventh came on the road against the Coyotes on April 16, 2010 in Game 2 of the Western quarterfinals. Zetterberg scored the Wings’ first goal just over six minutes into the second period. He then scored the eventual game-winner with about six minutes left in the third period and added an empty-netter in the final minute to make it 7-4. The Wings ended up winning the series in seven games as Zetterberg had six goals and five assists.

57: Just two Red Wings have scored more playoff goals than Zetterberg’s 57 — Steve Yzerman with 70 and Gordie Howe with 67. Zetterberg also has 63 assists, good for seventh on the Wings’ all-time list. Put them together, and Z finished with 120 points, fifth among the Wings; his 137 playoff games is just 10th, though. His best playoff run came in 2008, when his 13 goals and 27 points (in 22 games) led the NHL. Small wonder, then, that Z finished those playoffs carrying not just the Stanley Cup but also the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the playoff MVP.

The games

1,082: Zetterberg is one of just seven players to play at least 1,000 games in a Red Wings sweater; his 1,082 games played is sixth in franchise history. His 1,000th game (which featured a goal from Z) closed out Joe Louis Arena at the end of the 2016-17 season. Zetterberg is high up on several other Wings leaderboards; He’s fifth in goals (337), assists (623) and points (960) while finishing sixth in plus/pinus (160), seventh in even-strength goals (228) and eighth in power-play goals (100).

6. Jussi Jokinen, who’s in camp on a pro tryout, is a player that the hockey news’s Jared Clinton believes could “find a spot” in Detroit:

Jussi Jokinen, Detroit Red Wings
Jokinen’s precipitous decline has been somewhat shocking. An 18-goal, 60-point player with the Panthers in 2015-16, Jokinen has since posted seasons of 28 and 17 points and had a career’s worth of NHL movement during the 2017-18campaign. After beginning the season with the Edmonton Oilers, Jokinen skated with the Los Angeles Kings, Columbus Blue Jackets and Vancouver Canucks before the season was through. However, he only saw more than 14 games with the Kings, with whom he played 18.

So, while Jokinen’s five goals and 17 points last season aren’t going to inspire any sort of supreme confidence that the 35-year-old can still be an effective top-six player at a high level, it’s still somewhat commendable given he was living out of a suitcase and playing not just with new linemates but with a whole new organization every couple months.

Can he find some sort of form with the Red Wings? Maybe, maybe not, but if there’s any organization that might be willing to give him a shot right now, it’s Detroit. The Red Wings will need some fill-in talent that can play down the lineup. Jokinen can be that guy.

7. On Twitter:

Published by

George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!

One thought on “Afternoon round-up: Videos and articles from the second day of training camp, Zetterberg stuff and chatter about Jussi Jokinen”

  1. From what I’ve seen from Jokinen so far, nobody needs to worry about losing their job to him.

Comments are closed.